Thanks to the efforts of Chris Mather, co-head of the Tech Belt Energy Innovation Center, I was able to gain a tour of the Dolan Laboratories, located just outside Columbus, owned and operated by American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP). This facility is now highly unusual for the electric utility industry. Back in the day, a [...]
It’s Presidential Election year. Ergo, time to discuss our 40 year whacked out excuse for an energy policy. Royally botched up by every President since, umm? Objectives: Make US energy supply cheap for the US consumer and industry, fast growing and profitable for the American energy sector, clean, widely available and reliable, and secure, diversified, [...]
In early August, at the invitation of the Government of Canada, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA) organized a delegation of about a dozen energy executives from the Midwest U.S. to visit Canada to explore energy and environmental issues of common interest to the center of North America. From my prior participation on a CCGA task [...]
If there’s one segment of the energy sector that you’d think might be beyond significant technological innovation, it would be power transmission poles. And you’d be wrong! As profiled in a recent article in The Economist a novel transmission tower design called the Wintrack pylon has been co-developed by TenneT, the operator of the Dutch electricity grid, and KEMA, [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi Something grand is emerging on the vast dusty plains of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. Tres Amigas is an ambitious scheme to interconnect the three primary power grids in the U.S. — the Western grid known as WECC, the Eastern grid known as the Eastern Interconnection, and the Texas grid known [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi I don’t know if it’s a myth, but I’ve heard it said that a city’s suicide rates and average wind speeds are correlated. According to the claim, there may be something fundamental about human biology – perhaps within the inner ear – that makes windiness tend to drive people crazy. Whether [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi Over the weekend, an article in The Plain-Dealer reminded me that it has been five years ago since the infamous blackout that sent much of the Northeast U.S. and Ontario into the dark for a day or two. Once the power was restored to everyone, U.S. and Canadian authorities quickly commissioned [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi Ten days ago, I attended a one-day symposium on climate change solutions at Oberlin College. Speaking at the symposium was John O’Donnell of Ausra. Ausra is a leading player in the field of concentrating solar power (CSP), which utilizes mirrors to focus sunlight on a heating element containing a fluid to [...]
Cleantech Blog had a conversation last year with Stuart Hemphill, now the newly appointed Vice President for Renewables and Alternative Energy at Southern California Edison, a subsidiary of Edison International (NYSE:EIX), one of the largest purchasers of renewable power in the US. We caught up with him again today in a lively discussion around his [...]
